1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a code information printing technique and a technique for restoring a file from code information.
2. Description of the Related Art
One conventional encoding technique is QR encoding, which generates a two-dimensional (2D) code based on original data (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-344588). Upon encoding a plurality of data using this technique, 2D codes as many as the number of data are output. In some cases, a 2D code may be divisionally output on a plurality of print sheets. Also, upon encoding large amounts of data, a 2D code may be divisionally output on a plurality of print sheets. Since, the image size of the 2D code often exceeds the size of one print sheet.
Meanwhile, from the viewpoint of security, not only data but also a file name and the like of that data are often converted into 2D codes. However, if the file name and the like required in order to identify the data are converted into 2D codes, the correspondence between the 2D code and desired data becomes hard to determine.
Even if the 2D code corresponding to the desired data can be specified, the desired data cannot be restored unless a large number of documents on which the 2D codes are printed are re-arranged in original document order. For this reason, restoration requires much troublesome processing.